Janice Irene Swartz, 68, female, was at home in Littleton, Colorado, on March 23, 1989, when a young gunman’s rampage reached her door. Before dawn, the assailant—20-year-old Eugene Thompson Jr. of Littleton—had launched a violent spree that authorities said included home invasion and sexual assaults. Armed with a compact semiautomatic submachine-pistol he moved through the south-Denver suburbs, and by morning two women—a mother and her adult daughter—had been shot to death. Those victims were identified publicly as Janice and her 47-year-old daughter, Beverly J. Swartz.
News accounts described a manhunt that drew scores of officers into the neighborhood as Thompson fled and holed up in a townhouse with an 18-year-old hostage. When deputies forced entry, he opened fire, wounding two officers and the hostage; moments later he turned the gun on himself. Authorities linked the weapon used in the standoff to the earlier double homicide of Janice and Beverly.
Thompson was found with a self-inflicted head wound and, according to contemporaneous reporting, died of that injury, ending the spree that began only hours earlier.
Investigators quickly named Thompson as the suspect in the killings of Janice and Beverly Swartz. Because he shot himself at the end of the pursuit, there was no arrest or trial. The case was closed as part of that single, continuous criminal episode, with law enforcement attributing the murders to Thompson’s actions during the rampage.
